Why am I so sensitive to sound and feel so attacked and violated by it? I've been like this since I was 15.

A sudden sound to me is like a physical object striking me. Either way it's an intrusion that I sometimes lash back at with a temper tantrum, especially if I was in the middle of a thought or intention, in which case will be blocked and thwarted. Sounds are like a direct stop and interference with whatever thought or intention I had at the time.

How come other people aren't like that? It seems they tolerate interruptions like they are normal and in the flow of things. To me, interruptions are like a major diversion off course.

Do other people have some kind of mental filter in them that prevents sounds from affecting them? If so, how did my filter disappear?

Or am I just extremely sensitive to things like sound? I know one other guy who's like this, and he is also a deep insightful intellectual writer too. Are artistic and insightful people more likely to be like this?

Is there a name for this condition? Is it a kind of mental disorder?

PS - Murphy's law seems to work through it too, or perhaps the "law of attraction". When I'm with my parents, my mom belches like every other minute when I'm around, which drives me crazy and causes me to yell out in pain and anguish. My dad actually says that when I'm NOT around, she belches much less. Often at the start of the day, it doesn't even begin until I arrive! As soon as I am around, the belching starts again. It's like what I want to stop the most actually goes up in frequency when I'm around! Very weird. It might be something subconscious on her part, the law of attraction at work, or Murphy's Law.

Last edited by Winston on November 1st, 2011, 5:24 am, edited 2 times in total.

Hyperacusis is an abnormal sensitivity to loud sounds in people who have essentially normal hearing, who experience everyday noises as uncomfortably or painfully loud. Hyperacusis-sufferers can sometimes begin to rely heavily on earplugs and earmuffs to deal with the discomfort of not just very loud sounds such as the sound of a lawn mower or power tools, but the everyday sounds of life. Hyperacusis is very often present with tinnitus, but is sometimes present without tinnitus.

Hyperacusis is an abnormal sensitivity to loud sounds in people who have essentially normal hearing, who experience everyday noises as uncomfortably or painfully loud. Hyperacusis-sufferers can sometimes begin to rely heavily on earplugs and earmuffs to deal with the discomfort of not just very loud sounds such as the sound of a lawn mower or power tools, but the everyday sounds of life. Hyperacusis is very often present with tinnitus, but is sometimes present without tinnitus.

But my hearing is normal. Isn't this a problem with how the brain interprets the sounds? My brain interprets sounds as an attack.

Plus the interruption caused by the sound causes me anxiety and a sense of internal disorder, as though a line or chain has been broken. Perhaps it's related to an obsession with symmetry and order that some have?

The thing is, if I'm in a theater or concert, where I EXPECT loud sounds, they won't bother me because my mind is expecting them. It's when I am focusing on something and expect it to be quiet, that the sounds bother me. At that point, even a phone ringing makes me jump and causes me anguish.

I think maybe you should go to someone there who specializes in holistic medicine, (my preference). That being said, I was diagnosed by a psychiatrist a decade ago with Adult Attention Deficit Disorder. This has caused me problems throughout my life depending on how much stress is going on for me. I have tried several holistic approaches which have had a moderate amount of success. Now I am going to take the western approach again and try a medication because it has gotten out of control and my life is pretty chaotic right now. I don't know if Attention Deficit Disorder is your issue or not but if I were you I would explore some consultations to see if you can find a solution, particularly if it is drastically affecting the way your life works or doesn't. I tend to trust chinese medicine more than I do western medicine, but whatever works is what I usually say. No one else is going to live your life for you, so if it is a problem, you need to decide how you are going to find a solution. Diagnosis by committe can be a bit dangerous because everyone has something that affects them in different ways and has an answer according to their experience. Again that being said, there is a disorder that has to do with inner ear stuff and dizziness and being disoriented that someone I know has. I will check with him tomorrow to get a name and details of this disorder. Like I said earlier, maybe find a good holistic therapist that specializes in brain stuff, or maybe just start with a regular doctor.
Whatever you do, just get it checked out.

For years, various people have been interested in a link between "madness" and creativity. Some artists have also had mental health problems; at least, enough of them to fuel further interest in the connection.

Neurobiologists have now conducted some research (among Harvard undergraduates) that indicates the importance of Low Latent Inhibition in creative minds.

So what is Low Latent Inhibition?

Well, Latent Inhibition is the facility that allows us to filter out superfluous incoming data to the brain. It ensures that we register whatâ€™s around us on a â€œneed to knowâ€� sort of basis, thus saving our brains and ourselves from mental overload. Most people, when entering a room for the first time (let's say when visiting someone) will make one of the seats figural in their mind. Having somewhere to sit is their main objective in the moment. Once seated, they may look at their host, begin a conversation, look around the room. If invited to a drink, they may see what they prefer from the choices they are given. This, apparently, is a vital part of our wiring necessary to ensure survival. It would not be useful, when being attacked by a raging tiger, to be equally interested in the sunlight dancing in the droplets of saliva that are sliding slowly down its teeth. And, additionally, for that to be only one of ten pieces of data that one was simultaneously noticing. The chances of survival, in such circumstances, could be perceived as being rather slim.

However this is precisely the process in which the person with Low Latent Inhibition is permanently engaging. They are not filtering anything out. When they enter a room for the first time, they will be as alert to the tiny flecks on the pattern on the carpet as the slight swallowing in the throat that came with the offer of tea. As they made an initial, and cursory, scan of the room they will have taken in its every aspect and each perception will, to them, have equal and simultaneous emphasis. Alongside each of these simultaneous perceptions of physical phenomena, will be memories, associations, daydreams and thoughts. Each moment is an island within a constant stream of information.

There are many people who suffer from the same phenomena through illnesses such as schizophrenia and delusional pychoses. The incoming data is too much for them to deal with and, as they cannot filter it out, they need to take advantage of medication to do the filtering for them. The research indicates that, if Low Latent Inhibition is accompanied by a certain kind of intelligence, good working memory and well-developed ego-strength, then the individual will succeed creatively where (without these qualities) they would have collapsed under the impact of the constant stimulation and become mentally unwell. (However, although IQ may act as a protective factor, that does not mean it will prevent psychosis.)

As someone with an interest in Gestalt theory, I wonder about how this could affect our understanding of figure-formation in those with low latent inhibition. After all, there is not a solitary figure emerging from the field. The theory would have to take this into account in order not to dismiss their multiple figures as a deflection from the pain of more concentrated contact, for example. And I'd be wary of assuming that the contact isnâ€™t concentrated just because they are simultaneously aware of different threads in the moment. I wonder whether our concept of figure-formation could change a little in order to make room for such clients.

We currently have a single, clear, bright figure emerging from the field as a sign of healthy contact. Perhaps the single figure could, in some cases, be multi-composited. Just in the same way that a section of netting or tapestry is made up of many threads. The threads would change and shift in relation to the additional data they tilted towards in the stream of data (and would be, in turn, formed and reformed by the field, like any other emerging figure)."

Let me put another way. My problem is that unexpected sound is like a scissor cutting my "stream of thought". It causes me to lose the wavelength that I was on, which takes 5 to 10 minutes to regain sometimes, because I feel like I can't just continue where I left off if my wavelength or mood was disrupted. So I have to try to recapture that wavelength I was on before the interruption. It's very annoying and causes me to get angry sometimes and even cuss. I thought it was due to some form of OCD. But this is true of interruptions in general, not just noise. Other normal people can get interrupted in the middle of a conversation, and then pick up where they left off, without anxiety. But when I try to continue an interrupted conversation, I feel some anxiety as if I'm worried that a certain "wavelength" was broken which altered the original flow of the conversation.

You know, when I was 15, I didn't know how to explain this problems well. So when I told a psychiatrist about it, he immediately diagnosed me with schizophrenia and put me on Prozac, which was a huge mistake cause I felt extreme anxiety from the Prozac which made me feel like a mexican jumping bean. Every minute on the clock seemed excruciatingly long. Have you ever heard of that reaction to Prozac before?

I also had this strange OCD thingy where if I heard the word "death" for instance, I feel like I have to cancel it out by saying "life" or else it'll create some anxiety in me or fear of bad luck. What is that called? It used to be horrible, but now it doesn't happen that much anymore.

Check this out. Someone sent me this essay by Arthur Schopenhauer that sheds some light on why I am overly sensitive to sound. I think it makes sense. But I wonder, why isn't this talked about in the media or even in psychology magazines? If no one talks about it, then others who are like me will all think they are the only one.

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Winston,

There is nothing wrong with you and your aversion to noise is probably just evidence of your high intellect and tendency to ponder things. Below is Schopenhauer's famous essay, "On Noise." Read it and realize you are not alone, that nothing is wrong with you and that your dislike of noise was shared by one of the greatest minds of the 19th Century.

Kant wrote a treatise on The Vital Powers. I should prefer to write a dirge for them. The superabundant display of vitality, which takes the form of knocking, hammering, and tumbling things about, has proved a daily torment to me all my life long. There are people, it is true--nay, a great many people--who smile at such things, because they are not sensitive to noise; but they are just the very people who are also not sensitive to argument, or thought, or poetry, or art, in a word, to any kind of intellectual influence. The reason of it is that the tissue of their brains is of a very rough and coarse quality. On the other hand, noise is a torture to intellectual people. In the biographies of almost all great writers, or wherever else their personal utterances are recorded, I find complaints about it; in the case of Kant, for instance, Goethe, Lichtenberg, Jean Paul; and if it should happen that any writer has omitted to express himself on the matter, it is only for want of an opportunity.

This aversion to noise I should explain as follows: If you cut up a large diamond into little bits, it will entirely lose the value it had as a whole; and an army divided up into small bodies of soldiers, loses all its strength. So a great intellect sinks to the level of an ordinary one, as soon as it is interrupted and disturbed, its attention distracted and drawn off from the matter in hand; for its superiority depends upon its power of concentration--of bringing all its strength to bear upon one theme, in the same way as a concave mirror collects into one point all the rays of light that strike upon it. Noisy interruption is a hindrance to this concentration. That is why distinguished minds have always shown such an extreme dislike to disturbance in any form, as something that breaks in upon and distracts their thoughts. Above all have they been averse to that violent interruption that comes from noise. Ordinary people are not much put out by anything of the sort. The most sensible and intelligent of all nations in Europe lays down the rule, Never Interrupt! as the eleventh commandment. Noise is the most impertinent of all forms of interruption. It is not only an interruption, but also a disruption of thought. Of course, where there is nothing to interrupt, noise will not be so particularly painful. Occasionally it happens that some slight but constant noise continues to bother and distract me for a time before I become distinctly conscious of it. All I feel is a steady increase in the labor of thinking--just as though I were trying to walk with a weight on my foot. At last I find out what it is. Let me now, however, pass from genus to species. The most inexcusable and disgraceful of all noises is the cracking of whips--a truly infernal thing when it is done in the narrow resounding streets of a town. I denounce it as making a peaceful life impossible; it puts an end to all quiet thought. That this cracking of whips should be allowed at all seems to me to show in the clearest way how senseless and thoughtless is the nature of mankind. No one with anything like an idea in his head can avoid a feeling of actual pain at this sudden, sharp crack, which paralyzes the brain, rends the thread of reflection, and murders thought. Every time this noise is made, it must disturb a hundred people who are applying their minds to business of some sort, no matter how trivial it may be; while on the thinker its effect is woeful and disastrous, cutting his thoughts asunder, much as the executioner's axe severs the head from the body. No sound, be it ever so shrill, cuts so sharply into the brain as this cursed cracking of whips; you feel the sting of the lash right inside your head; and it affects the brain in the same way as touch affects a sensitive plant, and for the same length of time.

With all due respect for the most holy doctrine of utility, I really cannot see why a fellow who is taking away a wagon-load of gravel or dung should thereby obtain the right to kill in the bud the thoughts which may happen to be springing up in ten thousand heads--the number he will disturb one after another in half an hour's drive through the town. Hammering, the barking of dogs, and the crying of children are horrible to hear; but your only genuine assassin of thought is the crack of a whip; it exists for the purpose of destroying every pleasant moment of quiet thought that any one may now and then enjoy. If the driver had no other way of urging on his horse than by making this most abominable of all noises, it would be excusable; but quite the contrary is the case. This cursed cracking of whips is not only unnecessary, but even useless. Its aim is to produce an effect upon the intelligence of the horse; but through the constant abuse of it, the animal becomes habituated to the sound, which falls upon blunted feelings and produces no effect at all. The horse does not go any faster for it. You have a remarkable example of this in the ceaseless cracking of his whip on the part of a cab-driver, while he is proceeding at a slow pace on the lookout for a fare. If he were to give his horse the slightest touch with the whip, it would have much more effect. Supposing, however, that it were absolutely necessary to crack the whip in order to keep the horse constantly in mind of its presence, it would be enough to make the hundredth part of the noise. For it is a well-known fact that, in regard to sight and hearing, animals are sensitive to even the faintest indications; they are alive to things that we can scarcely perceive. The most surprising instances of this are furnished by trained dogs and canary birds.

It is obvious, therefore, that here we have to do with an act of pure wantonness; nay, with an impudent defiance offered to those members of the community who work with their heads by those who work with their hands. That such infamy should be tolerated in a town is a piece of barbarity and iniquity, all the more as it could easily be remedied by a police-notice to the effect that every lash shall have a knot at the end of it. There can be no harm in drawing the attention of the mob to the fact that the classes above them work with their heads, for any kind of headwork is mortal anguish to the man in the street. A fellow who rides through the narrow alleys of a populous town with unemployed post-horses or cart-horses, and keeps on cracking a whip several yards long with all his might, deserves there and then to stand down and receive five really good blows with a stick.

All the philanthropists in the world, and all the legislators, meeting to advocate and decree the total abolition of corporal punishment, will never persuade me to the contrary! There is something even more disgraceful than what I have just mentioned. Often enough you may see a carter walking along the street, quite alone, without any horses, and still cracking away incessantly; so accustomed has the wretch become to it in consequence of the unwarrantable toleration of this practice. A man's body and the needs of his body are now everywhere treated with a tender indulgence. Is the thinking mind then, to be the only thing that is never to obtain the slightest measure of consideration or protection, to say nothing of respect? Carters, porters, messengers--these are the beasts of burden amongst mankind; by all means let them be treated justly, fairly, indulgently, and with forethought; but they must not be permitted to stand in the way of the higher endeavors of humanity by wantonly making a noise. How many great and splendid thoughts, I should like to know, have been lost to the world by the crack of a whip? If I had the upper hand, I should soon produce in the heads of these people an indissoluble association of ideas between cracking a whip and getting a whipping.

Let us hope that the more intelligent and refined among the nations will make a beginning in this matter, and then that the Germans may take example by it and follow suit.[1] Meanwhile, I may quote what Thomas Hood says of them[2]: For a musical nation, they are the most noisy I ever met with. That they are so is due to the fact, not that they are more fond of making a noise than other people--they would deny it if you asked them--but that their senses are obtuse; consequently, when they hear a noise, it does not affect them much. It does not disturb them in reading or thinking, simply because they do not think; they only smoke, which is their substitute for thought. The general toleration of unnecessary noise--the slamming of doors, for instance, a very unmannerly and ill-bred thing--is direct evidence that the prevailing habit of mind is dullness and lack of thought. In Germany it seems as though care were taken that no one should ever think for mere noise--to mention one form of it, the way in which drumming goes on for no purpose at all.

Finally, as regards the literature of the subject treated of in this chapter, I have only one work to recommend, but it is a good one. I refer to a poetical epistle in terzo rimo by the famous painter Bronzino, entitled De' Romori: a Messer Luca Martini. It gives a detailed description of the torture to which people are put by the various noises of a small Italian town. Written in a tragicomic style, it is very amusing. The epistle may be found in Opere burlesche del Berni, Aretino ed altri, Vol. II., p. 258; apparently published in Utrecht in 1771.

Last edited by Winston on November 30th, 2011, 5:11 am, edited 2 times in total.

I have had the same problem for many years but have reduced it considerably with meditation. It's not the sound you are reacting too, but your resistance to the sound. I practice fully accepting sounds, because they are reality, and thus resistance serves no purpose but to create suffering. When you do this the irritation goes away. Start out trying it with simple sounds like a dog barking. Listen to the bark and concentrate fully on the sound as only sound - don't even form a perception of a "dog barking". That's where the resistance comes in - you then form thoughts "Why doesn't someone shut up that dog", etc. that increases the resistance. A meditation instructor would be fully aware of this type of problem and could give you further instructions. If you practice consistently, it will eventually begin to work for unexpected sounds. The Western psychobabble won't help you one bit.

MrPeabody wrote:I have had the same problem for many years but have reduced it considerably with meditation. It's not the sound you are reacting too, but your resistance to the sound. I practice fully accepting sounds, because they are reality, and thus resistance serves no purpose but to create suffering. When you do this the irritation goes away. Start out trying it with simple sounds like a dog barking. Listen to the bark and concentrate fully on the sound as only sound - don't even form a perception of a "dog barking". That's where the resistance comes in - you then form thoughts "Why doesn't someone shut up that dog", etc. that increases the resistance. A meditation instructor would be fully aware of this type of problem and could give you further instructions. If you practice consistently, it will eventually begin to work for unexpected sounds. The Western psychobabble won't help you one bit.

What if I taped the sounds I hate the most, and play them over and over again on the stereo? Would that work in desensitizing myself to them? lol That's be very extreme though. I'm talking about the gross sounds too.

MrPeabody wrote:I have had the same problem for many years but have reduced it considerably with meditation. It's not the sound you are reacting too, but your resistance to the sound. I practice fully accepting sounds, because they are reality, and thus resistance serves no purpose but to create suffering. When you do this the irritation goes away. Start out trying it with simple sounds like a dog barking. Listen to the bark and concentrate fully on the sound as only sound - don't even form a perception of a "dog barking". That's where the resistance comes in - you then form thoughts "Why doesn't someone shut up that dog", etc. that increases the resistance. A meditation instructor would be fully aware of this type of problem and could give you further instructions. If you practice consistently, it will eventually begin to work for unexpected sounds. The Western psychobabble won't help you one bit.

I am glad we are discussing this topic as I live in Taiwan and I really suffer from the very noisy environment here. And in the last few weeks a new source of terrible irration has appeared from the floors above my apartment. It sounds like a water pump that can go off at any time. The duration varies from a couple seconds to half a minute. The volume, intensity and pitch and tone can also change. To me this is akin to torture by sound because of it's unpredictability. So if there is some kind of meditation that can help me with this particular problem and the myriad sources of noise here, I would be very interested to learn about it.

MrPeabody wrote:I have had the same problem for many years but have reduced it considerably with meditation. It's not the sound you are reacting too, but your resistance to the sound. I practice fully accepting sounds, because they are reality, and thus resistance serves no purpose but to create suffering. When you do this the irritation goes away. Start out trying it with simple sounds like a dog barking. Listen to the bark and concentrate fully on the sound as only sound - don't even form a perception of a "dog barking". That's where the resistance comes in - you then form thoughts "Why doesn't someone shut up that dog", etc. that increases the resistance. A meditation instructor would be fully aware of this type of problem and could give you further instructions. If you practice consistently, it will eventually begin to work for unexpected sounds. The Western psychobabble won't help you one bit.

I am glad we are discussing this topic as I live in Taiwan and I really suffer from the very noisy environment here. And in the last few weeks a new source of terrible irration has appeared from the floors above my apartment. It sounds like a water pump that can go off at any time. The duration varies from a couple seconds to half a minute. The volume, intensity and pitch and tone can also change. To me this is akin to torture by sound because of it's unpredictability. So if there is some kind of meditation that can help me with this particular problem and the myriad sources of noise here, I would be very interested to learn about it.

When a sound irritates you, there are two components - the sensations of your body experiencing the sound and resistance to the sensations. Pain is the pure physical sensations you experience without anything added. Resistance is your body not liking the physical sensation and reacting against it, which includes mental thoughts such as "I can't stand it" and so forth. Here is the formula for suffering:

Suffering = pain x resistance.

The pain is almost always bearable but the suffering increases by the resistance to the pain. And suffering does not increase linearly but rather by a multiplication factor, and so is typically much worse than the actual physical sensations. If you can learn not to resist the pain, the physical sensations are always manageable, but suffering becomes torture.

Consider this example. A baby is crying. You do not like the crying and it irritates you and you are suffering. However, to the baby's mother, the sound of crying is actually pleasurable. So, the only difference between you and the mother is the state of mind. Your mind resists the crying and her mind fully accepts it. In both cases, the sound impinges on the ear and creates physical sensation, so it is only the resistance to the sound that causes suffering.

Exercise

When you here the sound - make a meditation of the sound. Try to fill your consciousness with the sound and empty your mind of thoughts. Try to concentrate fully on the feelings that the sound creates in your body. Where do you actually feel it? Can you feel it on your face, the top of your head, your chest, and so forth. Become fascinated with the sound and investigate the feelings. When you have thoughts observe them but don't go into them.

Below is a Youtube video by Shinzen on meditation for pain. Shinzen is a meditation teacher who teaches people, for example people with AIDS, how to live with chronic pain. He also actively applies his own theories and has actually done a Sun Dance to practice his meditations on pain - a Sun Dance is an American Indian spiritual ceremony where at the end of a dance two knives are put into each of your breasts and you are hung from a tree. So, if you practice consistently, you can get this to work.

MrPeabody wrote:I have had the same problem for many years but have reduced it considerably with meditation. It's not the sound you are reacting too, but your resistance to the sound. I practice fully accepting sounds, because they are reality, and thus resistance serves no purpose but to create suffering. When you do this the irritation goes away. Start out trying it with simple sounds like a dog barking. Listen to the bark and concentrate fully on the sound as only sound - don't even form a perception of a "dog barking". That's where the resistance comes in - you then form thoughts "Why doesn't someone shut up that dog", etc. that increases the resistance. A meditation instructor would be fully aware of this type of problem and could give you further instructions. If you practice consistently, it will eventually begin to work for unexpected sounds. The Western psychobabble won't help you one bit.

I am glad we are discussing this topic as I live in Taiwan and I really suffer from the very noisy environment here. And in the last few weeks a new source of terrible irration has appeared from the floors above my apartment. It sounds like a water pump that can go off at any time. The duration varies from a couple seconds to half a minute. The volume, intensity and pitch and tone can also change. To me this is akin to torture by sound because of it's unpredictability. So if there is some kind of meditation that can help me with this particular problem and the myriad sources of noise here, I would be very interested to learn about it.

The water pump's mounting probably needs some work to dampen the noise level.

Ask around to see if anyone complained of low water pressure and someone adjusted the pump settings. If the pressure is set too high it will cause leaks.